Hello magical friends, with a special welcome to my wonderful patrons, who make these interviews possible! I’m your hostwitch Bess, and today I’m excited to be talking to a wonderful new wizard rocker.
First, however, let’s talk anniversary merch. It wouldn’t be a WZRD birthday without some new swag, right? Based off the buttons I was handing out at LeakyCon last year, we have new stickers! “Wizard punks fight transphobia and listen to WZRD Radio.” We also now have iron-on WZRD patches! Go check them out at the WZRD shop, linked in the transcript. [link]
Here’s some light music to enhancing your browsing experience. First up we have DJ Luna Lovegood and “Yellow.”
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That was “Yellow” by DJ Luna Lovegood, Muggle Snuggle’s new song “Hermione’s Lament” [lyrics], and “Run Remus Run” from Hannah is a Horcrux.
I hope you had fun on your shopping break! Now it’s time to get into the interview with JD of the Fizzing Whizbees.
Welcome to the show JD of the Fizzing Whizbees! I am so stoked to talk with you today.
JD: Hi. I waved and then I realized you don’t have my camera, so I was….
<laugh>
JD: Hello.
So, I always like to start with your history with wizard rock, and this is gonna be extra interesting I think, because I assumed you were new since you just released uh, the album, but you actually said you are a fan for the last decade or so.
JD: Yeah, so, my first experience with wizard rock, I remember this so vividly, it was that I think 2010, and I’m not gonna age myself, but I was in high school and a friend was like, “Hey, this place called Quail Ridge Books is doing a wizard rock show. Do you wanna come with me and my friends?” And I was like, “uh, yeah, that sounds fantastic, let’s go!” And at the time, I was kind of having a bit of a house identity crisis, because I kept getting sorted into Hufflepuff and I was like, “I don’t want this” because I was a teenager, and it was the Blibbering Humdingers, who we still go and see regularly, opening for a tour that was The Whomping Willows, the Moaning Myrtles, and Justin Finch-Fletchly and the Sugar Quills. And it was just the four of them. So they were also each other’s backup singers, which was hilarious and fantastic all at once because like they jump into each other’s songs. And I came out of that having heard a Blibbering Humdinger song called “No Shame in Hufflepuff” that legitimately changed my mind on what house I wanted to be in.
And I’ve been following them and a couple other wizard rock bands since, fairly regularly. But it’s just taken me this long to actually make my own music and put that out into the world.
So what did, uh, change? Why now? Why wizard rock?
JD: It’s mostly as I’ve gotten into being an adult, I’ve had a promise to myself of you need to just start finishing things. Just, just finish it. Don’t worry about how good it is. Don’t worry about if it’s complete, just finish it. And I made a promise to myself in 2021 of ‘just finish some projects’ and my birthday was the 21st of September and I went, “you know what? For my birthday, I’m putting out this album. I’m not gonna care about the quality. I’m not gonna care about redoing like a hundred takes. I’m just gonna get this album out. “
Now, my listeners know I always like to hear the story of the name. Why the Fizzing Whizbees?
JD: So, my spouse helps me with all of this, ’cause they’re, they helped me edit and they uh, help me think of song stuff and they’re learning how to play bass to help me like live shows later on. And we were going back and forth about names for a bit, and we were trying to figure out something that was Harry Potter related, but not so deeply Harry Potter that we couldn’t publish other tracks that were not wizard rock under the name. Because like we love Harry and the Potters. We actually got to see them live once, which was super neat. But if they published a Star Wars song, I’d probably be like, “Harry and the Potters put out a song about Luke Skywalker, that’s a little odd.” That feels disconnected. And, inspired by the Blibbering Humdingers who, they’re named after a candy. But if you just said their name to other people outside of wizard rock, they’d be like, “oh, that’s just a really cool name.” They wouldn’t necessarily connect it, and it gives them a little bit more space to do other nerd stuff. So we wanted to be able to not kind of pigeonhole ourselves in too much while still being able to associate with Harry Potter, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I’ve had uh some other wizard rockers come on and talk about how challenging it can be to be writing from one perspective and uh how having a more open name gives you a little bit more creative freedom with the music that you create.
JD: And also just copyright reasons. Technically, I– fizzing whizzbees is spelled with two Z’s and I spelled ours with one. So, uh, lawyers stay away from me. I know what I’m doing. <laugh>
I was rereading, uh, Paul Thomas’ book about–and the section about um, the deal that Harry and the Potters made with the Warner Brothers lawyers early on really struck me.
JD: It’s like, I’ve never heard that story.
It was, oh I don’t remember the details, but it was, they couldn’t sell merch online, I think it was. Everyone just go read Paul Thomas’ book. It’s called We Wanna Rock? I’m looking it up right now just to make sure I get that right. Oh, okay. Paul Thomas’ book is called I Wanna Rock, and it’s this wonderful ethnography of wizard rock. Uh, he has a bunch of interviews and goes over the history and the like social makeup of the wizard rock community.
JD: Neat. I’m definitely, I just also wrote that down myself. I imagine wrock is W-R-O-C-K, right?
Yes.
JD: Yeah.
So my patrons uh were intrigued by your band name. Did you all debate any other candies?
JD: At one point, we were gonna go by uh Norwegian Ridgebacks ,’cause we were also looking at dragon names, ’cause we were like, those are really cool. But I know you had also kind of asked me ahead of time if there was gonna be another candy. And when you asked me that, my spouse immediately went to the wiki for all the candies to be like, “let’s look, let’s see.” Right? Because I picked it ’cause fizzing whizzbees are delicious, just for the record. They’re so good <laugh> ’cause they’re like pop rocks and chocolate. But we found the Unchewable Chew-Chews, and if that isn’t the greatest candy band name <laugh>, it’s so much fun to say <laugh>.
That’s incredible. And it’s still up for grabs, magical friends.
JD: Yeah. I’m I I’m gonna stick with the Fizzing Whizbees for now. So like, you, you can take that, but it is a fantastic band name, especially hearing it in my head of, “And next, the Unchewable Chew-Chews!” <Laugh> I don’t think I could say it out loud if I was an announcer, I’d laugh too hard. <laugh>
I know that there was a Norwegian, uh, Ridgebacks band. I think that was the children who uh played instruments and sang whatever came to mind. Do you know if there’s been a a Fizzing Whizzbees in the early days?
JD: I don’t think so. I did some like cursory googling to be like… I wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking it from anybody else that already had it, and I didn’t see anything, but I also wasn’t like, “I’m gonna go into a deep forum dive and like go look through LiveJournal and see who’s posted what,” like from the way, way back. So that’s one of those, “as far as I know.”
Uh, Your Wizard Rock Resource says that there was one. So you are carrying on a uh, strong wizard rock tradition.
JD: Good. That- I am both like, “oh cool, I’m carrying on a tradition” and “dang it, I wasn’t the first” <laugh>.
There were so many wizard rock bands in the early days. Something like 800, I think? It would be a shock if a name hadn’t been used, although I don’t think there’s an Unchewable Chew-chews.
JD: Yeah, that is that- There were a lot of little wizard rock bands back in the day. I kind of dipped my toes in it, but I don’t think I ever got like deep into it, so I didn’t hear all of the names, but I knew it was big.
It really was. And it’s nice to see… Wizard rock has ebbs and flows, and it’s nice to see that the continuation of uh, fun connected names is still a thing.
So, I know that Straight Off The Trolley isn’t just wizard rock, there’s a whole bunch of other fandoms in there. But bearing in mind this is a wizard rock show, uh, do you have a favorite song that you put out?
JD: You asked me that earlier and I’ve been sitting here trying to narrow it down to one and I’ve gotten to two. And that is about, I think as far as I’m going to get. I always have a hard time picking favorites of anything because there’s like three or four songs that I’m like, I love them all for different reasons and I can’t compare it. But honestly, if I had the two, the first song that I wrote and the last song that I wrote are honestly my two. Uh, the first song was, it’s not a wizard rock one, but it’s uh, “Distant Seas”. And I still have the original lyrics for that in my ukulele case because it’s the very first song I learned how to play and the very first song I ever wrote. And even though it is not Harry Potter, that song is just special to me because it’s my very first expression with a ukulele.
I literally wrote it a couple of weeks after learning how to play the one song. And, for the record, that one song is like the four simplest chords on a ukulele. It is so disgustingly simple and it’s very special to me because of that. But then I also wrote the last song, which is a Harry Potter song, which was, uh, “Can’t Stand Your Bigotry,” because as I was finishing up the album, I was like, “I have to be so explicit that this is not for Her. This has nothing to do with Her.” But I wrote “Can’t Stand Your Bigotry” because I was trying to make sure I put something on there. And I think it’s just a very heartfelt expression of how it feels to be a fan that is so deeply into this fandom, and then also to be a queer fan that’s so deeply into this fandom, because fun fact: my spouse and I, our wedding was Harry Potter themed.
JD: Our wedding rings are a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin wedding band. The Blibbering Humdingers were our wedding band, which was super neat. Like, I sent out the invitations as like, “I’m pleased to inform you that you have been invited to the wedding of,” in like stamped wax, like the whole nine yards. My 11-year-old cousin was stoked. Uh, she apparently brought it to school and was like, “Look what I got!” But to be so inundated like that and to have that such a part of yourself and then to have Her happen, I think “Can’t Stand Your Bigotry” came out of a sense of like, “I love this fandom and I have to make sure that people know it’s not because of Her.” If that makes sense.
Yeah. That’s a, a thing that comes up often in the community, which made me wonder a little bit: a lot of people especially, you know, queer fans or allies, just aren’t doing it anymore. How did you weigh releasing songs about Harry Potter against the, uh, reputation that JKR is garnering?
JD: I think at least some of it came from the fact that I am educated for and did teach sixth grade English for a year. And the sixth graders don’t know anything about her, but they love Harry Potter. When they saw that I was- loved Harry Potter, they were like, “Oh my God, you like a thing that I like?” And I realized that it still has so much of an impact on people who just aren’t ready to understand, ’cause they’re, they’re 12, right? They’re, they’re still figuring themselves out. I’m not gonna burden them with all of Her horrible, uh, while they’re still trying to figure out how to get from A to B without tripping on their own shoelaces. And I think I had that rationalization of, some people will still enjoy this even realizing that it’s not about Her. And I also think partially as someone who is queer, I’ve always had that sense of, and if I put my grubby little hands on it, she’ll hate me for it, because she doesn’t want me to touch her medium. So ha ha ha! Look at me putting my queer all over your things.
I like that. There’s a, I think a fierce sort of passionate joy in refusing to cede ground, and that makes the, the fight a little bit easier.
JD: And like, especially being someone who is like gender non-conforming in that kind of way. I’m just like…I think that’s a little bit of uh, where “All Your Favorite Characters Are Gay” also kind of came from was me being like, “guess what? I’m gonna your queer media too, and you can’t stop me.”
Totally Knuts did an entire project where they wrote down every named character from the series and then made them queer in a song. And I think that has the same energy as uh, as “All Your Favorite Characters Are Gay.”
JD: Big ‘everybody is queer, surprise!’ energy. I love it.
And in the community I think that is uh, a not untruth. I I hear over and over again how Harry Potter helped people you know, accept, come to terms with, embrace, uh, their queerness, find uh a queer community. The ‘nobody deserves to live in a closet’ metaphor is very alive and real.
JD: It’s always so wild to me that She is so much like that and yet her media is so much the opposite of everything she stands for. And I’m like “Ma’am, do you realize what community you attracted” <laugh>?
Did, did you read the books?
JD: <laugh> like JK, did you actually read your own books?
This looks like a good spot for a music break. Here’s Striking Down Diggory with “HarGin.”
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You just heard “HarGin” by Striking Down Diggory [lyrics], “I Wanna Be A Death Eater” from Crabbe and the Goyles, and The Patil Project with “Why Can I Wear (the damn butterfly in my hair)” [lyrics].
I’d like to send a special thank you to Anandini for helping me get my hands on “Why Can’t I Wear,” which was a special collaboration between herself, Tom Bailey, and Sharmin Rahman. Here’s hoping we get more Patil Project in the future!
In the mean time, here’s more of my conversation with JD of the Fizzing Whizbees.
My patrons wanted to know: I think the candy thing really triggered a lot of hunger, um, but also curiosity. What wizarding candies or treats do you wish we had access to that we don’t.
JD: So, in the deep dive, this also came up as a possible band name. Um, but my spouse found the name of legitimately my favorite candy that’s come up in the movies, which is titled Elephant on a Bicycle. And it’s that one candy where you eat it and then you make animal sounds based on the like style of the candy that you just ate. So we see like Ron eat like a lion one and then he roars, I think it was in the third movie, it’s either third or fourth. My brain goes to it being third because that entire movie was very grey and dismal and I remember it was like zoomed into a like raining outside panning scene ’cause they were all in the dorm and Ron had the stupid hat on. But that is a fantastic candy. I really wish we had that. It also came up as a possibility for a really cool uh, wizard rock band name because Elephant on a Bicycle is also really fun.
It also sounds like it would be a good album name.
JD: True. There’s a lot of good band names that could also be good album names. It kind of like, it’s both.
As someone who just completed the album and is experimenting with all of the the technology, I thought you might have some great advice for other people wanting to dabble in wizard rock.
JD: I’ve been thinking about this question for a minute too, ’cause like that’s always a really hard question, ’cause there’s so many little things you could be like, it’s like, “buy a professional microphone, do a this thing.” Honestly though, my big piece of advice is, if you’re gonna make a wizard rock album, make sure the standards you’re trying to stick to are standards that you set. Not anybody else. ‘Cause half the reason this took six years is because I wanted to be Good Enough at ukulele. I wanted to be Good Enough at writing. I wanted to have the Correct Number Of Songs On An Album before I released it. Like standards are, there’s supposed to be 12 to 20, right? So I was trying to fit standards that other people had set in the music industry and it kept me from putting my music out there, and me deciding to finish it was me going, y”eah, you know what? I don’t need that many songs. I’m just gonna put out what I have.” I don’t need to be better, I just need to put it out there.
And you’re probably gonna hear later when I do the live version of “Hufflepuff,” I’ve changed the key on two of those songs. “Can’t Stand Your Bigotry” and “Hufflepuff,” I have legitimately altered the key because I can’t sing that high anymore, and I put them out there anyway. I’m probably gonna rerecord them and put them back on Straight Off The Trolley, or I’m gonna leave them and just rerelease them on another album later as like, here’s the remastered version. And I think it’s a good thing to keep in mind is you can, you can always put another version of it out there. Like, I have a version of a Blibbering Humdinger song that they’d probably be like, “please throw that away. That, that’s the oldest version we have. We don’t sell that one anymore.” But I covet it ’cause it’s cool. So always make sure you’re sticking to your standards, not someone else’s standards, ’cause we’re in a a world where people move the goalpost all the time.
That’s one of the things that I love so much about wizard rock is that, I say this all the time, but the barrier to entry is so low. We’re not aiming for, you know, music charts top 100 produced by enter famous producer here. All the music is created, uh, for fun and to share with a very specific community, so you don’t have to do it the Right Way because there is no right way here.
JD: Yeah, like originally when I started recording Straight Off The Trolley, I was using a USB microphone that came with RockBand and a copy of Audacity, which is free. And I’ve since gotten a better mic because we’ve done more audio production stuff that’s required us to get slightly better stuff for that. But like, the entire intent of Straight Off The Trolley was, I didn’t edit that. I did a little bit of volume mixing so you could hear my voice and that, that was it. It’s Straight Off The Trolley. It’s just one file for my voice, one file for the ukulele, and that’s it. And I think that was my excuse to go, hmm, standards: trash can. No one’s standards but my own. And I’m done <laugh>. I just wanna put these out there.
And it’s fun, and people enjoy listening, which is proof that it works. It doesn’t have to, doesn’t have to be whatever your definition of perfect is.
Now listeners know I like to get particularly detailed advice, something technical.
JD: Yeah.
Do you have anything for ukulele or singing or Audacity? Microphones?
JD: Honestly, a lot of my technical experience is just playing with stuff, and I think, if I was gonna give technical advice, really like as long as you can get in there and get your hands on it, that’s the most important part. Like, this microphone was technically given to us by a friend. We didn’t like purchase it. I don’t know actually how it works, but I was able to get my hands in there and like fiddle with it. And as we talked at the beginning, my, the thing we’re running it through now, it sometimes does weird stuff and I still don’t know why it does those things. Like it tried to set my TV’s volume as it, as a speaker, and I think it’s trying to use it the like output, but it’s as long as you can get in there and fiddle with it, that’s the most important part about what you’re using. And then actually fiddle with it, play with it. Do like 10 different takes and have the volume gain set 10 different ways and just see how it sounds. Because sometimes the old stuff and the weird stuff is the most fun. Like, a high quality mic will get you nice and crisp and clear. But a RockBand mic has a fun sound to it.
I like that, that’s perfect. I get nervous messing with settings. But if we go with the no-standards-but-your-own thing, it makes perfect sense to touch buttons and see what happens.
JD: And like, worst case, you write down all the things that you did and you just walk those things backwards. Like, most programs are fairly forgiving in that sense. You can kind of always set it back. As long as you know where it started, you can always put it back.
So maybe that’s our best advice: if you’re gonna touch buttons, write down what buttons you touched.
JD: Or uh, here’s at least one piece of technical advice that I know is very specific. But if you use Audacity, there’s an old version of Audacity and a new version of Audacity. They don’t talk to each other, just for the record. They save differently. <laugh> We’ve discovered that recently. I’m using an old version of Audacity and my spouse had to download it new, and it legitimately saves it in a different format and it will not read itself.
Yeah, that’s what I use for, for the podcast and uh, every update sends me into a panic.
JD: Shakes fist at Audacity. It’s great, I love Audacity, but sometimes you’re just like, please? <Laugh>
<laugh>
JD: Audacity, what are you doing?
It sounds like, uh, you and your spouse have been gearing up for more creation; uh, Straight Off The Trolley is not a one and done. What are you working on?
JD: So there’s a couple of different things. There’s some stuff that’s not wizard rock and there’s a couple things that are wizard rock. I already have album concepts for a couple of different things, one of which is a wizard rock thing, and two of which are like filk rock but not necessarily Harry Potter. I know I wanna reproduce most of the songs on Straight Off The Trolley minus some of the Star Wars ones with- I’ve learned- learning how to play bass, so I can make it like electric ukulele and bass, like, punk rock the way it should sound. And I know I want to call that album, My Band- Band Has Four Strings because between a ukulele and a bass, there aren’t more than four strings on either of them. And I don’t know how to play guitar, but I also know like, I’m planning to actually put all the Star Wars stuff on its own album, and I’m only telling people the album title because if you are from old internet, uh, I am sorry you are about to physically hurt. I wanna title it (We Have Cookies). There’s a very old meme with Vader in it where it says, “Come to the dark side, we have cookies.” So I just want to title it (We Have Cookies).
<laugh> I think that will be a huge hit.
JD: And there’s another item I’m- err, another album I’m spitballing that’s me just having fun, that I’m not gonna say much about, but I am gonna say my plan is to release it on 4/20, if that tells you anything about what it’s going to be about. And that’s just me wanting to have fun with writing different things and trying different stuff. I think the big thing, and this is not necessarily a wizard rock thing, that my spouse and I are working on together, is we do actually have a podcast ourselves. It’s a fictional audio drama, like, horror podcast. That’s where we’re learning how to do all of the audio stuff is through that, is having to edit audio for that and record voices for that and all of that kind of stuff. Um, but that’s called The StarPort Inn, and that’s available on basically anywhere you can get podcasts.
I believe you said, uh, your spouse helped with a lot of the behind-the-scenes for Straight Off The Trolley. Are we going to hear them on any of the songs? Are they on any of the songs and I missed It?
JD: Uh, they’re not necessarily like singing. I think if I release the My Band Has Four Strings and there’s bass on it, they might be there playing bass or playing drums or one of the instruments. And if I ever, if we ever do stuff live and they’re confident in their bass playing, that’s, you’ll probably see them there, but they’re more of like, they help with audio editing, they’re helping me make sure the gain’s not spiking the thing, and like, I’m not sounding like garbage, and just the, the general fiddly behind-the-scenes stuff.
Are we anticipating, uh, any live Fizzing Whizbees performances at conventions or around town?
JD: M-Maybe? I know right now, um, there’s not any plans for anything in particular, but I think if someone was like, “Hey, do you wanna do like an opening set?” I would a) panic, but then probably say sure, uh, <laugh> because I haven’t done any live music ever, so that’s- it’s terrifying, but I don’t think I’d say no to it.
Well that’s super exciting. I look forward to seeing a Fizzing Whizbees performance someday.
JD: Crossing fingers, you know. It’d be fun to do; it would be very fun to get up on stage and open for somebody and then, I would hope, that somebody would fall in love with this band and this music in the same way I fell in love with the one wizard rock concert that I went to or, it was in a library, right?
Our final music break is here, and it starts with The Potentials and “Extra Flamey.”
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That was The Potentials with “Extra Flamey,” Go! Go! Gryffindor singing “Still Waiting,” “I Don’t Want to be the Chosen One” by Crookshank, and “I’ve Got Friends” by The Lovegoods [lyrics].
“I’ve Got Friends” was a special request from my amazing patron Geoff, who dedicates it to everyone who contributed to TK’s TK in any capacity. Speaking of which, you can still get a copy at the link in the transcript, and every bit of whatever you pay will go to help with TK’s surgery bills! [link]
Here’s the last bit of my conversation with JD.
Thank you so much for talking with me today. This has been fun. There’s sounds like a lot to look forward to. Where can WZRD listeners find you online?
JD: I know the biggest place right now is, if you are looking up The StarPort Inn on any kind of podcast stuff, we have a contact email there as well as like, that’s an RSS feed that goes everywhere, and that’s mostly where we’re posting. I have my BandCamp and, I’m on some social media, but I’ve not really connected- I’ve not really connected my social necessarily to my wizard rock life yet. That may be something in the future. But considering I taught middle schoolers, I’ve been very cagey about just giving out my social media to people because that’s, they’d be like, “I wanna know, I wanna know!” <Laugh>. I’m like, “no, no, no, you don’t get to see my tiktoks.”
If you heard a song today and you thought “I could listen to that again” then go to the transcript at WZRDRadioPod.com, follow the link and buy a copy of your very own. It’s the best way to support your favorite musician, and without our wizard rockers, we wouldn’t be here.
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If you want to keep up with WZRD between episodes, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at WZRDRadioPod. If you don’t believe in social media, you can also comment on the transcript or email me at WZRDRadioPod@gmail.com.
And now, here’s The Fizzing Whizbees!
JD: So, this is- the official title is “Hufflepuff”, my written title is “Hufflepuff featuring Taylor Swift.” I know better than to put that on the album though, <laugh>, ’cause then her lawyers would be like, “excuse me?” And this was I think the second song I wrote. And I think when I was starting to write songs, I was like, “I’m a Hufflepuff, I love being a Hufflepuff, so I need to write a pro-Hufflepuff song, because there’s very few of them.” I had yet to discover Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls. So, that was also me being limited in my wizard rock knowledge for Hufflepuff songs. This is going to sound a little bit different, I think, than the album version because initially it’s supposed to be in this slightly deeper key, which was great until my voice dropped and now I can’t hit those notes anymore. So I’ve had to push it up so I can sing deeper <laugh>. And I’ve only figured that out in the past couple of weeks. So this might be in a slightly different key, but my voice should hopefully die a little bit less.
WZRD Radio Podcast 